We study the anchoring effect in a computational model of group deliberation on preference rankings. Anchoring is a form of path-dependence through which the opinions of those who speak early have a stronger influence on the outcome of deliberation than the opinions of those who speak later. We show that anchoring can occur even among fully rational agents. We then compare the respective effects of anchoring and three other determinants of the deliberative outcome: the relative weight or social influence of (...) the speakers, the popularity of a given speaker's opinion, and the homogeneity of the group. We find that, on average, anchoring has the strongest effect among these. We finally show that anchoring is often correlated with increases in proximity to single-plateauedness. We conclude that anchoring can constitute a structural bias that might hinder some of the otherwise positive effects of group deliberation. (shrink)

The study of complexity and optimization in decision theory involves both partial and complete characterizations of preferences over decision spaces in terms of real-valued monotones. With this motivation, and following the recent introduction of new classes of monotones, like injective monotones or strict monotone multi-utilities, we present the classification of preordered spaces in terms of both the existence and cardinality of real-valued monotones and the cardinality of the quotient space. In particular, we take advantage of a characterization of real-valued monotones (...) in terms of separating families of increasing sets to obtain a more complete classification consisting of classes that are strictly different from each other. As a result, we gain new insight into both complexity and optimization, and clarify their interplay in preordered spaces. (shrink)

When making substituted judgments for incapacitated patients, surrogates often struggle to guess what the patient would want if they had capacity. Surrogates may also agonize over having the (sole) responsibility of making such a determination. To address such concerns, a Patient Preference Predictor (PPP) has been proposed that would use an algorithm to infer the treatment preferences of individual patients from population-level data about the known preferences of people with similar demographic characteristics. However, critics have suggested that even if such (...) a PPP were more accurate, on average, than human surrogates in identifying patient preferences, the proposed algorithm would nevertheless fail to respect the patient’s (former) autonomy since it draws on the ‘wrong’ kind of data: namely, data that are not specific to the individual patient and which therefore may not reflect their actual values, or their reasons for having the preferences they do. Taking such criticisms on board, we here propose a new approach: the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4). The P4 is based on recent advances in machine learning, which allow technologies including large language models to be more cheaply and efficiently ‘fine-tuned’ on person-specific data. The P4, unlike the PPP, would be able to infer an individual patient’s preferences from material (e.g., prior treatment decisions) that is in fact specific to them. Thus, we argue, in addition to being potentially more accurate at the individual level than the previously proposed PPP, the predictions of a P4 would also more directly reflect each patient’s own reasons and values. In this article, we review recent discoveries in artificial intelligence research that suggest a P4 is technically feasible, and argue that, if it is developed and appropriately deployed, it should assuage some of the main autonomy-based concerns of critics of the original PPP. We then consider various objections to our proposal and offer some tentative replies. (shrink)

We introduce a new class of real-valued monotones in preordered spaces, injective monotones. We show that the class of preorders for which they exist lies in between the class of preorders with strict monotones and preorders with countable multi-utilities, improving upon the known classification of preordered spaces through real-valued monotones. We extend several well-known results for strict monotones (Richter–Peleg functions) to injective monotones, we provide a construction of injective monotones from countable multi-utilities, and relate injective monotones to classic results concerning (...) Debreu denseness and order separability. Along the way, we connect our results to Shannon entropy and the uncertainty preorder, obtaining new insights into how they are related. In particular, we show how injective monotones can be used to generalize some appealing properties of Jaynes’ maximum entropy principle, which is considered a basis for statistical inference and serves as a justification for many regularization techniques that appear throughout machine learning and decision theory. (shrink)

Resumen: El espacio dramático de Michel Tremblay, “tesoro nacional” de Quebec, está poblado por personajes que se enfrentan casi siempre a la alienación y al deseo de encontrar, o incluso de crear, su propia identidad. Los héroes tremblayanos, cualquiera que sea su orientación sexual y posición en la sociedad, realizan un paso desde la inactividad hasta la acción para desgajarse del orden preestablecido. A veces incapaces de cambiar su situación, a veces felices al poder, por fin, contestar a la pregunta (...) “¿quién soy yo?”, los personajes del teatro de Tremblay siguen siendo representativos de la sociedad quebequense que, durante el período de la llamada Revolución tranquila, se vio sometida a unos profundos cambios identitarios. A lo largo de la evolución social del Quebec de los años sesenta y setenta del pasado siglo, se fueron estableciendo paralelismos entre la toma de conciencia identitaria de la sociedad y la de los personajes dramáticos de Trembley. Así, estos últimos se convertirían en alegorías de la estructura social en por lo menos dos dimensiones, moral y cultural, en el caso de Belles-Sœurs y À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou, donde se incuban las frustraciones propias de unas heroínas abrumadas por la cultura patriarcal (impotente en todos los ámbitos y ante todo el sexual), representada a su vez por la pieza Hosanna, a la que se la puede considerar como el símbolo de la expresión social de la homosexualidad y de la identidad sexual en general. En consecuencia, la finalidad de este artículo sería la reflexión misma acerca de unas (r)evoluciones teatrales que reflejarían las llevadas a cabo por la Revolución tranquila dentro de toda la sociedad. Abstract: Michel Tremblay's dramatic space, Quebec’s “national treasure”, is populated by characters who are almost always confronted with alienation and the desire to rediscover, and even to create, their own identity. The heroes of Tremblay, whatever their sexual orientation and social positions are, have the story of a passage from inaction till the act of tearing themselves away from the pre-established order. Sometimes incapable of changing their situation, sometimes happy to finally be able to answer the question “Who am I?”, the characters in the Tremblayan theatre are at all times representatives of the Quebec society, which, during the Quiet Revolution, suffered profound changes in identity. Throughout the social evolution in Quebec in the 1960s and 1970s, the awareness of the identity of the society and that of the dramatic characters are two matters that coexist in parallel manner. Thus, the latter become allegories of the social structure on at least two levels: moral and cultural, in the case of the Belles-Sœurs and À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou representing several frustrations: of the heroines, overwhelmed by the powerless patriarchal culture; sexual, represented for example by Hosanna being the symbol of the social expression of homosexuality and sexual identity in general; and finally, actional, as in the case of Sainte Carmen de la Main, which constitutes a message to Québécois to take their destiny in their hands. The main objective of the article is to bring some reflections on theatrical (r)evolutions which reflected the changes of the Quiet Revolution within the entire society. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

John Scot Eriugena's work Periphyseon is commonly regarded as having introduced Neoplatonism into early medieval thinking. Eriugena's theory of the reunification of the Creator and his creation is then viewed as being based on the Neoplatonic scheme of procession and reversion. However, this interpretation falls short of Eriugena's intentions. Above all, he denies any ontological difference between Creator and creation without taking recourse to the Neoplatonic considerations of procession and reversion. Surprisingly, according to Eriugena's explanation, God is not only the (...) Creator but he is also created. He is created insofar as he alone, possessing all being, is the essence of all created things. Moreover, the fourfold division of nature, presented at the beginning of the work, is not Eriugena's own innovation, but a common Carolingian concept. It is rather his aim to show that from an ontological point of view this division has to be resolved. (shrink)

It is widely believed that informed consent must be obtained from a patient for it to be morally permissible to administer to him/her a medical intervention. The same has been argued for the use of neurointerventions administered to criminal offenders. Arguments in favour of a consent requirement for neurointerventions can take two forms. First, according to absolutist views, neurointerventions shouldneverbe administered without an offender’s informed consent. However, I argue that these views are ultimately unpersuasive. The second, and more plausible, form (...) defences of the consent requirement may take are more moderate in that they accept the use of neurointerventions in some cases, but not in others. Based on common rationales for consent in medical interventions, I discuss whether four moderate approaches in defence of the informed consent requirement for medical interventions succeed in establishing that informed consent must be obtained from offenders prior to administering neurointerventions to them. I offer novel critical perspectives on approaches that have already received some attention in the literature, and I critically discuss other approaches to defending informed consent in a medical context that have not yet received due attention. Ultimately, I argue that it is not obvious that any of these considerations support a requirement of offenders’ informed consent to neurointerventions. Lastly, however, I suggest that there is at least one overlooked fact as regards how courts currently employ mandatory neurointerventions, which may support such a requirement. (shrink)

David Chalmers uses Bayesian theories of credence to argue against referentialism about belief. This paper argues that Chalmers’s Bayesian objections to referentialism are similar to older, more familiar objections to referentialism. There are familiar responses to the old objections, and there is a predictable way to modify those old responses to meet Chalmers’s Bayesian objections. The new responses to the new objections are no less plausible than the old responses to the old objections. Chalmers’s positive theory of belief and credence (...) is structurally similar to typical referential theories of those objects, but his theory is more speculative and dubious. (shrink)

I conceptualise the role of dualities in quantum gravity, in terms of their functions for theory construction. I distinguish between two functions of duality in physical practice: namely, discovering and describing ‘equivalent physics’, versus suggesting ‘new physics’. I dub these the ‘theoretical’ versus the ‘heuristic’ functions of dualities. The distinction seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the philosophical literature: and it exists both for dualities, and for the more general relation of theoretical equivalence. The paper develops the heuristic function (...) of dualities: illustrating how they can be used, if one has any luck, to find and formulate new theories. I also point to the different physical commitments about the theories in question that underlie these two functions. I show how a recently developed schema for dualities articulates the differences between the two functions. (shrink)

Belief revision theory and philosophy of science both aspire to shed light on the dynamics of knowledge – on how our view of the world changes in the light of new evidence. Yet these two areas of research have long seemed strangely detached from each other, as witnessed by the small number of cross-references and researchers working in both domains. One may speculate as to what has brought about this surprising, and perhaps unfortunate, state of affairs. One factor may be (...) that while belief revision theory has traditionally been pursued in a bottom- up manner, focusing on the endeavors of single inquirers, philosophers of science, inspired by logical empiricism, have tended to be more interested in science as a multi-agent or agent-independent phenomenon. (shrink)

Porsdam Mann and colleagues provide an overview of opportunities and risks associated with the use of personalized large language models (LLMs) for text production in bio)ethics (Porsdam Mann et al...

The Introduction to this volume identifies and briefly summarizes certain issues which have been of central concern to philosophers in the transcendental tradition, including: the question of its relation to metaphysics; the relation of transcendentalism to transcendental idealism; the Kantian concept of a condition of possibility; the concepts of transcendental logic and of transcendental proof or argumentation; the concept of the transcendental turn and the issue of its justification; and the standpoint of transcendental reflection.

We present a new notion of game equivalence that captures basic powers of interacting players. We provide a representation theorem, a complete logic, and a new game algebra for basic powers. In doing so, we establish connections with imperfect information games and epistemic logic. We also identify some new open problems concerning logic and games.

One way to seek to reduce the risk of potential offenders engaging in certain types of crime in a public or semi-public area is to make it much more difficult, or even impossible, for them to gain access to the area in question and subject them to a sanction if they do enter the area. This paper considers whether preventive exclusion of this kind should be considered a pro tanto morally impermissible means of crime prevention because it violates the agency (...) of those excluded. Several variants of this agency objection to preventive exclusion are identified and critically assessed. It is argued that none persuasively show preventive exclusion to be pro tanto morally wrong. (shrink)

In vertebrate development, the HOX genes act to specify cell identity along much of the anterior‐posterior axis of the embryonic central nervous system. In all vertebrates examined to date, the vitamin A metabolite retinoic acid is implicated in the patterning of the anterior posterior axis and the induction of HOX gene expression. Two recent papers have extended the study of retinoic acid induction of HOX genes to the closest relatives of the vertebrates, amphioxus and tunicates(1,2). In both these species, exogenous (...) retinoic acid is able to induce ectopic expression of HOX 1 genes in the anterior central nervous system. This suggests that retinoic acid control of anterior‐posterior axis formation and HOX induction is not specific to vertebrates. However, in the more distantly related echinoderms and arthropods, retinoic acid does not seem to act in the same way. Thus the role of retinoic acid in anterior‐posterior axis specification may be a chordate innovation, perhaps linked to the evolution of another chordate character, the dorsal neural tube. (shrink)

Should artificial agents (such as robots) be granted moral status? This seems like an important question to resolve, given that we will encounter a growing number of increasingly sophisticated artificial agents in the not too distant future. However, many will think that before we can even start to tackle questions about the moral status of artificial agents, we first need to solve tricky issues in the philosophy of mind. After all, most orthodox views about moral status imply that only entities (...) with a mental life are eligible for moral status. But, whether an unfamiliar entity like an artificial agent has a mental life raises controversial questions in the philosophy of mind. Given this, one might hope that we can resolve questions about the moral status of robots via “minimalist” views that give sufficient conditions for granting moral status to an entity that we can know to be satisfied without knowing whether the entity in question has a mind. This paper argues that we should be pessimistic about the prospects of minimalist views avoiding controversial questions in the philosophy of mind, by arguing that minimalist sufficient conditions are only plausible if combined with assumptions in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had profound effects on all aspects of society. Families were among those directly impacted by the first measures imposed by health authorities worldwide to contain the spread of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, where social distancing and mandatory quarantine were the main approaches implemented. Notably, little is yet known about how social distancing during COVID-19 has altered families' daily routines, particularly regarding music-related behaviors. The aim of this study was 2-fold: (i) to explore changes in (...) families' daily routine and caregivers' levels of well-being and stress during the COVID-19 outbreak in Brazil and (ii) to investigate whether musical behaviors of caregivers and the children under their care (aged from 3 to 6 years old) changed during social distancing. One hundred and eighty-eight caregivers residing in Brazil participated in an online cross-sectional study conducted between July and August 2020. Our findings suggest significant changes in families' dynamics during the COVID-19 outbreak, with parents (especially mothers) spending more time on childcare and a substantial decrease in caregiver's well-being. Regarding music-related behaviors, our results revealed considerable changes in caregivers' and children's musical activities at home during social distancing, including an increase in child-only musical behaviors and shared caregiver-child activities. Moreover, sociodemographic factors such as caregiver background and well-being as well as the child's disability status significantly influenced musical engagement at home during social distancing. This study captured some features of the home musical environment of middle-class families in Brazil in the first stages of social distancing restrictions during the pandemic and caregivers' role in providing an environment where musical experiences are nurtured. Further research is needed to better understand aspects such as the long-term impact of the changes of musical behaviors at home on musical parenting and families' well-being. (shrink)

Die Naturphilosophie und die Politische Philosophie werden gemeinhin als Disziplinen aufgefasst, die grundlegend verschiedene Problembereiche zum Gegenstand haben. Die Aporien zu überwinden, welche daraus resultieren, ist die Pointe von Plessners Philosophischer Anthropologie. In dieser Studie wird gezeigt, wie Plessner in der Aneignung elementarer Topoi der klassischen Ontologie eine strukturell neuartige "Ontologie des Organischen" entwickelt. Dieser von Plessner beiläufig verwendete Ausdruck wird in dieser Studie systematisch entwickelt. Was dabei elaboriert wird, ist eine komplexe naturphilosophische "Ontologie des Ausgleichs". In dieser Ontologie des (...) Ausgleichs werden elementare naturphilosophische Ausgleichsleistungen expliziert, die als solche einen Doppelsinn haben: was auf der organismischen Ebene strukturell als Ausgleich des organischen Körpers mit sich selbst und der Umwelt expliziert wird, nimmt im menschlichen Bereich die Gestalt einer Ontologie der Personen an, wo die strukturell identische Ausgleichsleistung als das Spiel der Personalisierung zu vollziehen ist. Plessners Ansatz wird hier als ein auf diese Fragen neuartig antwortender, gleichberechtigt als ontologischer und sozialphilosophischer Ansatz expliziert. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses the argument from objectification – as recently presented by Elizabeth Shaw – against mandatory direct brain interventions targeting criminal offenders’ values as part of rehabilitative or reformative schemes. Shaw contends that such DBIs would objectify offenders because a DBI “excludes offenders by portraying them as a group to whom we need not listen” and “implies that offenders are radically defective with regard to one of the most fundamental aspects of their agency”. To ensure that offenders are (...) not objectified, Shaw first maintains that we should restrict rehabilitative/reformative schemes to attempts at rational dialogue because such an approach respects the offender’s personhood. Second, Shaw claims that we should not portray offenders as radically defective because such treatment would only negatively impact offenders’ already tenuous relationship with society. Third, Shaw contends that we should not confer the state the power to change an offender’s values because the state lacks insight into what constitutes the right values. I contend that none of these arguments should prevent the use of value-targeting DBIs. First, I show that the dialogue requirement for rehabilitative schemes is insufficient ground from which to oppose the use of these DBIs. Second, I show that it is doubtful that the use of DBIs as proposed would damage the relationship between offenders and society. Finally, although the state may often lack insight into what constitutes the correct values, this lack of insight should not by itself prevent value-targeting DBIs from being employed on certain groups of offenders. (shrink)

This paper argues for Propositionalism about knowing-how (also known as Intellectualism). On this view, knowing how to G reduces to propositional knowledge. It argues for this view without relying on contemporary theories of the semantics of interrogatives. It answers various objections.

Schools in Germany are frequently named after people. Thus, these persons are remembered in the public sphere. This article answers the question to what extent the school names in the federal state of Thuringia correspond with the history of scientific pedagogy. For this purpose, in a first step, the controversial discussion about key figures in pedagogy and history of education is presented. In a second step the entirety of all school names in Thuringia is considered and individual results are discussed. (...) As a rule, it is not pedagogues who lend their names to schools but writers, artists and political figures. Only one fifth of all schools named after a person are named after educators. It is found that the key figures in pedagogy are rarely available as namesakes, whereas in practice successful school founders are preferred as name-givers. Accordingly, the history of pedagogy is represented in a filtered way in school names. Based on these results, further research perspectives for research on school names are formulated. (shrink)

We are all familiar with judgements about the persistence of people. Furthermore, we tend to structure certain attitudes and practices around such judgements because we think that personal identity matters for the relevant practical concerns. Response‐dependence views try to accommodate that personal identity matters by letting relevant attitudes and practices determine the personal identity relation for a particular person. This paper argues that genuine response‐dependence views are not well positioned to accommodate the connection between personal identity and what matters. Rather, (...) if we accept such a connection, this supports normative‐facts‐first views, according to which relevant normative facts determine personal identity. (shrink)

We characterize the expressive power of the modal mu-calculus on monotone neighborhood structures, in the style of the Janin-Walukiewicz theorem for the standard modal mu-calculus. For this purpose we consider a monadic second-order logic for monotone neighborhood structures. Our main result shows that the monotone modal mu-calculus corresponds exactly to the fragment of this second-order language that is invariant for neighborhood bisimulations.

Adrian Moore argues that Kant’s transcendental idealism is incoherent, and that its incoherence gives us an invaluable insight into the fundamental nature of metaphysics, motivating the reconception of metaphysical inquiry with which Moore concludes his story of the development of modern philosophy. My discussion has three parts. First, I focus on the treatment of Kant’s transcendental idealism in Moore’s earlier book, Points of View, and highlight ways in which Moore is, I argue, open to challenge. Second, I suggest that the (...) historical record does not bear out Moore’s criticism of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Third, I compare Moore’s response to the alleged incoherence of transcendental idealism with that of the German Romantics. (shrink)

Florea Lucaci, Creatie si fiintare. Un temei în ontologia umanului Editura Dacia, Cluj Napoca, 2002.

Motivational and emotional changes across adulthood have a profound impact on cognition. In this registered report, we conducted an experimental investigation of motivational influence on remembering intentions after a delay (prospective memory; PM) in younger, middle-aged, and older adults, using gain- and loss-framing manipulations. The present study examined for the first time whether motivational framing in a PM task has different effects on younger and older adults’ PM performance (N = 180; age range: 18–85 years) in a controlled laboratory setting. (...) Based on lifespan theories of motivation, we assumed that the prevention of losses becomes more relevant with increasing age: We expected that older adults show relatively higher PM performance in a task with loss-related consequences following PM failure than in a task in which successful PM leads to gains. The opposite pattern of performance was expected for younger adults. The findings suggest that the relevance of reward and positive gain-related consequences for successful remembering appears to decrease with age. As hypothesised, a motivational framing × age interaction indicated that age differences in memory performance were smaller with loss-related than gain-related consequences, supporting a loss-prevention view on motivated cognition. (shrink)